I haven't done one of these "Meet the Family" posts in a while, so here's a quick introduction to my uncle Kangtai. He's the sixth of the eight children from my father's generation of the Zhu clan. In the summer of 1968, during the Cultural Revolution, Uncle Kangtai and my father were sent to the countryside as part of the mandatory rustication program for youths who had "graduated." Although Kangtai was not yet 16 at the time and would've been only in the equivalent of ninth grade, he was classified as a high school graduate because of the tumult of the previous two years had shut down schools and created a logjam of students, so several years' worth of students were simply declared graduates and sent to the countryside so that schools would have space available for new students.
Uncle Kangtai worked in real estate during the 1990s -- Guangdong province was the site of the first experimentations with the housing market in China after the policies of reform and opening up were implemented. Uncle Kangtai endured the boom and bust of the housing market in Guangzhou, and now he owns and operates an art gallery and studio in Foshan, a city on the outskirts of Guangzhou. When we visited China in 2008-09, one of our most memorable experiences was the day when a large contingent of the Zhu clan went to Foshan, consumed ample amounts of alocohol over lunch, and then went back to Uncle Kangtai's gallery to watch Uncle Zhaohua, my dad, Uncle Kangtai, and Uncle Zhongping create some fine Chinese brush paintings while still tipsy and raucous :-)
